Notes

Combining collage with mixed media, Deborah Roberts’s figurative works depict the complexity of Black subjecthood, redefine beauty, and critique ideals and stereotypes. Exploring themes of race, identity and gender politics, Roberts is renowned for creating semi-autobiographical portraits of African American girls and boys, primarily through her distinctive use of collage. Roberts imbues her figures with agency, thus providing them with unique and unfixed identities pointing toward their complex inner and outer lives. Roberts’s work mixes found imagery with hand-painted or drawn elements to create hybrid figures that skirt the boundaries of the real, and challenge notions of authority in image making. With collage, Roberts seeks to create a more expansive and inclusive view of the Black culture experience. Deborah Roberts was born in 1962 and is based in Austin, Texas. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, North Carolina (2024); Deborah Roberts: I’m, The Contemporary, Austin, TX; Deborah Roberts: If They Come, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK; Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi, Spelman Museum, Atlanta, GA; Doro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, Californian African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles; Still I Rise, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; Go Figure, Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Reclamation! Pan- African from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Legacy of the Cool: A Tribute to Barkley L. Hendricks, Mass Art, Boston MA; and Fictions, Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; among others. Her work is included in several public collections including, Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Mueum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. - Via Vielmetter